Now is an exciting time for new music – but then it generally always is. Occasionally, though, it’s good to shout about it and, because it’s often strongest in different fields at different times, to ask where the light is currently burning brightest. So, rather than try to attempt a survey of all new music, we’ve instead chosen to interview three composers who exemplify the most inspirational work taking place in three specific areas: Eric Whitacre, the West Coast American who has, through his luminous, layered sound and innovative use of new media, encouraged vast new audiences to the choral tradition – itself an area with a great appetite for new music; Sir Harrison Birtwistle, a British composer who, after a half-century-long career, retains an ever-questing thirst for musical exploration; and John Adams, whose ability to turn contemporary context into timeless art has placed a living composer firmly in the consciousness of the wider public, up there among authors, painters, architects – where they should be of course, but sadly often are not.

We’ve also used the phrase ‘new music’; not, for example, ‘contemporary classical’. ‘Classical’ is a useful but awkward term; most readers of Gramophone will have an instinctive idea of what it means, but may struggle to define it in a way that embraces the vast variety of music it includes. It also risks enclosing us behind a barrier, in a way that other contemporary art forms would not do.

Whitacre, Adams, Birtwistle. Worthy subjects, but ones which didn’t leave room for exploring so many other geographical and stylistic areas, some of which are happily celebrated among this month’s highlighted releases. Danish composer Poul Ruders; the reflective intensity of Russian Sofia Gubaidulina; Michel van der Aa, a Dutch cross-genre creator whose works entwine music, film and stage; and Finnish master Einojuhani Rautavaara, whose propulsive, mysterious percussion concerto Incantations is explored by the young virtuoso he wrote it for, Colin Currie, in The Musician and the Score: it’s our Recording of the Month, and a superb way to crown our celebration of new music. 


martin.cullingford@haymarket.com